"The president is the heart of darkness": Iraq, Iran, Oil and the Horror: So Where's the Press?

[McCamy Taylor]

“Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.” J Paul Getty

Thomas Ricks quoted a government official as saying "the president is the heart of darkness." He meant no one knows what goes on inside W.'s head, however the reference to Joseph Conrad's masterpiece about European colonialism can not be ignored. Anyone who has done any reading knows that the Iraq War is a colonial venture, an enterprise undertaken with the goal of securing someone else's oil for our use. The United States has made its intentions clear in this regard. So, why do members of the mainstream press, even ones opposed to the war like the journalists on MSNBC who sit around their tables asking "Why are we in Iraq? Why are we going into Iran?" appear so clueless? Could it be that they are afraid to reveal the truth? Are they like Marlowe, Conrad's narrator? Do they believe that they are protecting the American public from the "horror" of the truth? Would it be "too dark" if our illusions were shattered and we understood exactly what kind of robber barons have been running the show in this county for the last sixty years?

There is a word for that, guys. Paternalism. And guess what. If you fail to do your job to inform the American people, the way that Marlowe failed to do his duty by Kurtz's intended, then you will be forced to carry your guilt forever, like the Ancient Mariner, explaining to everyone you meet "I couldn't have done it any differently. I couldn't!"

Yes, you can. Here is how. Here is the real scoop.

Immediately after WWII, US and Great Britain foreign oil policy was very simple and cold blooded when it came to the Middle East.

In 1945, the United States had explicitly confirmed its desire to maintain control over the Middle East in joint coordination with its partner, the United Kingdom:

"Our petroleum policy towards the United Kingdom is predicated on a mutual recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control, at least for the moment, of the great bulk of the free petroleum resources of the world... US-UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern for the development and utilisation of petroleum resources under the control of nationals of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance."<1>

http://newsmine.org/archive/coldwar-imperialism/iraqgate/1991-gulf-war-massacre.txt

Love that word "free". Imagine if some country had looked at all the forests of the US and said "They have a lot of trees they are not using. Let's go get some of that 'free' lumber."

There is more:

"It is essential that we should increase our strength in not only the diplomatic but also the economic and military spheres. This can best be done by enrolling France and the lesser Western European powers and, of course, also the Dominions, as collaborators with us".<5> This would be achieved by opposing any movement threatening Western domination of the region, particularly what is referred to as "Arab nationalism", a term referring to the desire of the indigenous populations to determine their own political and economic destinies, particularly their own resources. Thus, in 1958, a secret British document described the principal objectives of Western policy in the Middle East:

"The major British and other Western interests in the Persian Gulf (a) to ensure free access for Britain and other Western countries to oil produced in States bordering the Gulf; (b) to ensure the continued availability of that oil on favourable terms and for surplus revenues of Kuwait; (c) to bar the spread of Communism and pseudo-Communism in the area and subsequently to defend the area against the brand of Arab nationalism."<6>

The US and Great Britain were not all talk and no bite. When Iran attempted to steal the UK's oil (which, for some odd reason, happened to be lying under Iranian soil) through nationalization, the US engineered a coup and brought the Shah of Iran to power. There he stayed for decades, torturing and murdering innocents, keeping the people in poverty with the support of the US government.

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php

Note that in the 19th century, colonialist justified their foreign intervention as necessary to spread Christianity. In Iran, in the 20th century, they were stamping out communism. Now, in the 21st century, we go into another country to steal their oil in order to halt the spread of terrorism.

An interesting side note. The press did not always pretend that it did not know what the colonialists were up to. After the coup in Iran, the newspaper of record, the New York Times wrote this.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2006/11/08/of_real_and_manufactured_crisis_iran_in__1

“Costly as the dispute over Iranian oil has been to all concerned, the affair may yet be proved worthwhile if lessons are learned from it. Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-reaching leaders.”

Big stick rhetoric as late the 1950s. Maybe the modern New York Times is promoting another invasion of Iran for the exact same reason as the coup back then---to secure rights to all that oil.

Iraq waited until later to begin its attempts at oil nationalization.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/5873nation.htm

Eventually, the Bathists succeeded in taking control of Iraq's oil in 1972. With the Soviets to back them up, there was not a lot that the US could do about it in that troubled time except stew. And plan.

Even Saudi Arabia was starting to think that the oil that lay under its soil belonged to it and not to the US and Great Britain. In 1950, the Saudis had threatened to nationalize in order to increase their cut to 50%. During the Middle East wars, they used the power of the embargo as a political tool. This kind of behavior made the US government very, very irate. So irate that in the 1970s a group got together to start planning how the United States would take over the Middle East.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0304itch.htm

"It's the Kissinger plan," says James Akins, a former U.S. diplomat. "I thought it had been killed, but it's back." <snip> In 1975, while Akins was ambassador in Saudi Arabia, an article headlined "Seizing Arab Oil" appeared in Harper's. The author, who used the pseudonym Miles Ignotus, was identified as "a Washington-based professor and defense consultant with intimate links to high-level U.S. policymakers." The article outlined, as Akins puts it, "how we could solve all our economic and political problems by taking over the Arab oil fields bringing in Texans and Oklahomans to operate them." Simultaneously, a rash of similar stories appeared in other magazines and newspapers. "I knew that it had to have been the result of a deep background briefing," Akins says. "You don't have eight people coming up with the same screwy idea at the same time, independently.
"Then I made a fatal mistake," Akins continues. "I said on television that anyone who would propose that is either a madman, a criminal, or an agent of the Soviet Union." Soon afterward, he says, he learned that the background briefing had been conducted by his boss, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Akins was fired later that year.

I don't know if Miles Ignotus was Kissinger. However, the plan obviously had some kind of high level support if Akins got fired. And history---and the NeoCons---have proven that it was not the stuff of science fiction. The only change has been that Iraq and Iran have been targeted, not Saudi Arabia. Hmmm. Maybe it has something to do with all that protection money the Saudi Royal family pays the Bush family and Kissinger.

From the same link:

Today, a growing number of Washington strategists are advocating a direct U.S. challenge to state-owned petroleum industries in oil-producing countries, especially the Persian Gulf. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and CSIS are conducting discussions about privatizing Iraq's oil industry. Some of them have put forward detailed plans outlining how Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other nations could be forced to open up their oil and gas industries to foreign investment. The Bush administration itself has been careful not to say much about what might happen to Iraq's oil. But State Department officials have had preliminary talks about the oil industry with Iraqi exiles, and there have been reports that the U.S. military wants to use at least part of the country's oil revenue to pay for the cost of military occupation.

"One of the major problems with the Persian Gulf is that the means of production are in the hands of the state," Rob Sobhani, an oil-industry consultant, told an American Enterprise Institute conference last fall in Washington. Already, he noted, several U.S. oil companies are studying the possibility of privatization in the Gulf. Dismantling government-owned oil companies, Sobhani argued, could also force political changes in the region. "The beginning of liberal democracy can be achieved if you take the means of production out of the hands of the state," he said, acknowledging that Arabs would resist that idea. "It's going to take a lot of selling, a lot of marketing," he concluded.

Now, what exactly is wrong with nationalized oil? Besides the fact that Exxon, Shell and the rest can not take over the fields and control the profits? When a country that owns a lot of oil but does not use a lot controls its own production, it can decide how much it will produce and export. When it gets together in a group like OPEC, it can set production amounts to keep the supply low and the price high. That way, countries can be sure that they will have a long term supply of their best natural resource to fund projects like roads, schools, health care etc. They are not likely to invest a lot of money in technology that would allow them to pump more oil more rapidly, since that would lower the cost of oil--not in their best interest. They can also decide to whom they want to sell---and that might not be Big Brother USA. There is also the problem of that oil wealth being put to uses that the USA does not approve of, like Chavez spending money helping other South American countries break free from the cycle of poverty and dependence upon countries like the USA. And then there is China, our big economic rival, maybe even our master. If the US controlled the world's oil supply, we would not be under China's thumb anymore.

Here are two recent article about the US business community's deep concerns over the growing trend towards nationalized oil fields.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/jlanders/stories/071707dnbuslanders.4043.html

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1431714920070214

Note that some countries like Russia are immune to US take over (Russia has nukes). We tried and failed with Venezuela. The countries of the Middle East must look like tempting targets.

US oil policy has been the guiding factor in Middle East relations. From the newsmine link:

"Securing the flow of affordable oil is a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy. The U.S. strategy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq, designed to ensure that neither Iraq nor Iran is capable of threatening neighboring Gulf countries, is inextricably linked to Washington’s oil policy...

It has always been about the oil, and in particular about punishing those nations which had the balls to nationalize their oil:

http://www.thedubyareport.com/iraq2.html

Undoing the nationalization of Iraqi oil would be a triumph of neoconservative big-business-as-government. When Iraqi oil was nationalized in the early 1970s, it triggered a region-wide movement as OPEC nations, including eventually Saudi Arabia, took back ownership of oil production from multinational corporations. According to Dreyfuss, the INC, the neoconservatives, and the oil executives are fully aware of the implications of de-nationalization. The Heritage Foundation report concludes "Iraq's restructuring and privatization of its oil and gas sector could become a model for oil industry privatizations in other OPEC states as well, weakening the cartel's influence over global energy markets." "It's probably going to spell the end of OPEC," says Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects for JINSA.

Hell, even the holy of holies the Baker Study Group demanded de-nationalized oil.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=18609

The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq, and assuring that all of Iraq's oil revenues accrue to the central government..."the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." ... The report specifically recommends the latter: "Oil revenues should accrue to the central government and be shared on the basis of population." If these proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq's oil wealth.

George W. Bush has actually admitted that the War in Iraq was about what he calls oil "security" (I call it greed). Alan Greenspan has said the war in Iraq was about oil. James Baker III told W. before 9/11 that Saddam would have to be removed from power in order for the US to gain access to Iraqi oil. The NeoCons are on record for at least a couple of decades as advocating a take over of Iraq's oilfields.

You would think that the members of the press could put together a story from that. Americans are not so naive as journalists might imagine. They do not need their nightly news sugar sweetened. Maybe if they saw Chris Matthews and company discussing the whole truth instead of a prettied up version of it they might tune in more often. If confronted with this information, how many journalists would dare to say "I have never seen any of this"? How many would reply "Yes, I know all of that"? Since most would fall in the latter category (newsmen do not want to look ill informed), why are they not talking about it? Because they are afraid of angering their corporate bosses? Because they are afraid of scaring the viewers? Because they are worried some right wing group will label them unpatriotic?

That is a lot of scared journalists. Maybe they should act more like Dan Rather, who was not afraid to stand up to the Bush administration on Abu Ghraib and isn't afraid to stand up to Viciom/CBS. There is a reason why Dan Rather is the most respected and well known TV journalist in the US, and it ain't because he is yellow.

[Time for change]

1. Some of the most important quesitons of our time

This would be a very different country if journalists would report and discuss what is really important.

[LiberalLovinLug]

2. Excellent read

The truth is that BushCo. allowed the 9/11 strike to happen. (They may have even helped it along with explosives etc...) Perhaps they didn't know exactly what would happen, but they did know Bin Laden was "determined to strike the US", and they knew planes might be involved. When it all went off with only a couple of hitches, like flight 93, Cheney must have cracked the one smile he's managed in ages.

It was such sweet timing for the neo-cons though wasn't it? Now they could "blow up" the world-wide threat of evil terrorists coming soon to a shopping mall or school near YOU, in order to continue to carry out the 50 year move to steal and pillage from some other country(ies).

The MSM is acting disgracefully. Its like they would ignore a story about a violent family with a dumb as bricks father, deciding to break into the neighbors house, to steal their silverware, jewelry, and flat-screen TV. What they tell their other neighbors is that they have proof that this particular family has been plotting to attack them and the rest of the neighborhood, and has been sending their kids out to vandalize other properties. They can't share the proof, because they don't really have any. Now they can loot and trash this unfortunate family, who are tied up and injured from the assault. All the other neighbors can do is rebuke because the attackers are rich with weapons and have the biggest baddest sons carrying out their dirty deeds.

The MSM are like a frightened child of the badass family, holed away in an upstairs room playing video games to take their minds off of it all.